3 Hidden Perks To Being Present: Empty Nester Edition
Last week I talked about how many parents struggle with holding it together while launching their child out of the nest. We also broke down how you can pull yourself together using your body’s natural ability to process.
But does it really matter? “This too shall pass”, right? Well, yes. BUT being skillfully present during this significant life event is the difference between stressing your kid out, having uncontrolled emotional outbursts and being anxious about your next steps versus letting your child go fully focused on what they need to be doing for themselves while modeling how to gracefully navigate stress and feel empowered and excited about your empty nest potential.
Here are a few subtle but important perks to being present that you might be overlooking:
Leave Your Child Feeling Confident That You’re OK
It can be really hard to emotionally keep it together during these sentimental send-off moments. It’s not that you’re necessarily sad, you’re just….feeling everything all at once. Of course, you absolutely have every right to feel this way. However, you don’t want to send your kids off on their adventure worrying about you. You want to give them a positive, confident transition with a reasonable display of emotions. You want them joyfully moving forward so they can focus on what they need to be doing for themselves to ensure their own success.
Navigate Intense Moments With Grace So You Can Move Forward Without Baggage
Your mind-body system is innately resilient and quite effective at getting us through stressful and emotional moments. Your system has a variety of default ways to cope without actually dealing with discomfort or stress. However, when you don’t take time to process the only thing you gain is a tension pattern holding what is suppressed in your mind-body system. This compartmentalization zaps your resources and you waste energy to suppress and avoid. You may also lose the opportunity to compassionately speak up for how you feel, honoring what you need. Yet, every time you are present with discomfort, allowing it to process, it develops your healthy coping skills, your “self-regulation muscle” so to speak. This skill lessens the build-up of emotional triggers and thus the intensity of your next struggle. It can even help you to prevent repeating an issue. Knowing that you’ve mastered the ability to navigate stress is an empowering skill set that transforms everyday life. But all of this can only happen when you chose to show up and be present.
Feel Confident In What’s Next For You
As if all this isn’t amazing enough, the awareness skills that empower you and your child to gracefully succeed in this life transition is also laying the groundwork for you to joyfully step into what’s next for you. The only way to figure out “how to do you” is by getting more familiar with YOU. These same awareness exercises helping you to settle down, process and reset yourself also help you to hear, see and feel what works for you and what doesn’t. It helps you to know what is for you and what issue, struggle or feelings belongs to someone else in your life. Lastly, it helps you to listen to your inner wisdom, recognize your new purpose and have clarity on how to implement it in your life with ease.
So if you’re reading this going – heck yeah - but you don’t think you’re quite ready to settle into deep processing just yet, I have a great, simple exercise for both your mind and body. My sweet friend Emmett, who is a self-healing inspiration to everyone he meets, recorded this mini-Qigong warm up to help get you started with healing awareness. You can access it when you register for my free Tool Box. It can be found under the Feel Better In 5 Minutes Or Less Module. Enjoy!